A World Drowned
by NicKenny
Summary: One-shot interpretation of the story of Noah and the Ark. Winner of the Cecil-Day Lewis Award 2012.


**A World Drowned**

It began as a day much like any other, but would end as one few men would ever see. I was playing with my friends through the dusty streets of the village I called home. We did what we had done every day before, joked around, climbed trees, begged some food from the more good natured of our neighbours, had play fights over the most insignificant of disagreements.

Due to our preoccupation, we barely noticed that it had begun to rain, and when we could no longer pretend to ignore it we sighed collectively, before saying our goodbyes and making the arduous trek back home.

I raised my arms above my head to provide brief respite as I made my way towards the main square, for the rain truly was falling heavily at this stage, hammering into the ground. The earth beneath began to turn to mud, which squelched beneath my bare feet, causing me to chuckle, despite the inevitable lecture that I would receive for trudging mud into our home. It hadn't rained it a long time, so it felt more like a cause for celebration than for annoyance, despite the fact that it had cut my playing time short.

The smile slowly slipped off my face when the air itself seemed to change, causing me to stop in my tracks, rendered dumb by a change that I couldn't begin to explain. I noticed several other people had stopped and were looking around, ill at ease, evidently sensing the same thing I had.

All at once the very ground beneath me began to tremor, making my knees shake with it, only luck saved me from losing my balance. I began to panic, my heart racing as I lived through a moment seeming to originate from hell itself just as the screaming began.

I looked around, head flicking from left to right, trying to find a familiar face but failing. A calloused hand grabbed my shoulder and I spun around into a face that I vaguely recognised. He could have been a neighbour, a friend of my fathers, even the man whose dog was the bane of my mother's life, digging holes in the ground in front of our home like something possessed; I was in too much of a state of shock to deal with functions higher than simple recognition.

"You're Lamech's son, right?"

I nodded slowly; the small movement requiring an incredible amount of effort as my body seized up, the screaming and the reek of fear in the air finally getting to me. He smiled, showing teeth stained with age, and hunkered down so he could talk to me face to face.

"Ignore everyone one else and follow me, ok?"

I stared into his eyes and nodded, more certain of myself this time.

He smiled reassuringly and took my hand, taking me through the crowd of panicking people, all apparently rushing to get somewhere safe. I doubted whether they'd have any luck. After all, if the ground itself was shaking, what was unyielding, what was safe? How could you believe your own senses?

The earth beneath us trembled once more and I would have lost my footing, was it not for the man, who caught me as I fell and righted me. We gradually made our way to the old pine tree in the centre of our village, fighting through the crowd every step of the way, to where several people were attempting to take refuge underneath its boughs.

The man looked down at me. "You can climb, yes?"

I smiled, remembering all the times I had sprang up and down the small cluster of trees near my house with my friends. This old pine, with the abundance of branches, would provide little challenge.

The man returned my smile. "I'll take that as a yes then."

He picked me up and helped me up onto one of the lower branches, instructing me to climb as high as I could, following me up the tree until he was forced to stop as the branches above him wouldn't take his weight. Being smaller and lighter, I finally settled a couple of feet above him and turned to look down on my village.

I frowned as I noticed a blur in the distance, which was gradually growing larger until it dominated the entire horizon and a roar began to fill my ears. Light dawned on me as the spray glistened in the sunlight coming off the edge of the oncoming wave, so far from the sea.

I completely froze as my eyes took in the impending wall of water which began to crash over my village, deafening my ears. No - wall didn't do this justice. A mountain of water poured over the surrounding land, taking everything it swallowed up with it, houses, people, animals, trees, making no distinction as it swept over them.

I heard screams ring out, only to be swiftly silenced by the elemental roar of the flood, animals bleated in terror, houses collapsed, until the entire world seemed to be made up solely of sound. The man below me was pulled into the abyss in a spray of white tears, uttering a short scream before he disappeared from sight.

I turned my face to the tree and clung to the trunk, trying to find reassurance in its solidity, in the fact that it had not collapsed yet, when so many of its like had disappeared before the water. I pretended each knot and swirl in the bark was an animal, two of every kind, and I named each of them, trying to prevent my mind on dwelling on what was occurring below me. When that was no longer enough I began to pray, my mouth forming unintelligible syllables as I sought for protection from any deity listening, mixing prayers that my mother had thought me with old stories and my own personal pleading, trembling throughout.

I sat there for what seemed like days, flinching with every tremor that ran up through the tree, until the rain stopped falling, and light fell once more upon the earth. Somehow, whether some God had answered my prayers and watched over me, or merely that the tree had very strong roots, it remained steadfast until the tide gradually began to recede, revealing the carnage underneath, the destruction it had done to the place I had once called home.

I sat there, paralysed, unable to think, when a dove alighted on the top of my tree, its soft cooing helping me to piece my mind back together. By the time it flew off I could move again, not fully in control, but not as terror stricken as I had been before. When I felt sure the water wasn't going to return I slowly climbed down from my refuge, this may have been a few days after the flood, or merely a few hours. I couldn't tell, as time had started to blend together. Hunger and dehydration could do that to you.

I chuckled at the irony of the situation, dying of thirst after a flood, weariness nearing hysteria. I couldn't get myself to drink though; the sight of the vast puddles of water lying on top of land more used to being barren sickened me. The wreckage that lay strewn among it may have contributed.

I ignored everything, took no notice of the pain that wracked through my body with every step, refused to acknowledge the ruins of houses and the dead that lay sprawled on every street. I could vaguely determine where I was by the layout of the streets and the remains of what had been the environment of my childhood. All of that was over now. I would never be a child again.

I made my way towards my destination, knowing what I would find but needing to see it all the same, hoping against hope that I was wrong. Hope could be such a dangerous thing. Eventually I picked my way through the wreckage to what I had once called home. The roof had caved in along with two of the outlying walls, part of it was still underwater and debris was strewn all across it, but there was no doubt in my mind.

This had been my home.

I sagged, collapsing to my knees as tears streamed down my face and dripped onto the ground, creating a flood of my own, more personal, but no less destructive. I gazed at the wreckage, the debris, the complete annihilation of everything that I had ever known.

In the distance, a rainbow shone in the sky, mocking the world before it with its brilliance. I hated it. My silence, lasting from the moment I left my friends until now, was finally broken as I muttered a single word.

"Why?"

I got to my feet and roared it again, with what strength remained in me. "WHY?"

I don't know what I expected, some sign maybe, some reason for this….this apocalypse, but I didn't get one. All I received was the return of silence, filling up every space imaginable, until I felt suffocated by loss and loneliness. It was shattered by a soft cooing noise, as the dove that had reassured me earlier now came to roost on my house, somehow causing my raging blood to cool, and tears took over once again.

Water, the very source of life, had robbed mine from me. I was a survivor in a land now filled with life but at the same time devoid of it. I was the only man alive in a world drowned, left with the ruins of buildings and the corpses that were once living, breathing human beings.

I was alone.

I was alive.

My name was Noah.


End file.
